The Mothers of Voorhisville (14 page)

“But that doesn't mean anyone's going to guess about
our
babies,” Maddy said.

Emily, who had slung the gun bandolier fashion across her chest (using one of Theresa's flowered scarves), sauntered to the front of the room. “I think probably all of us have had some close calls with our babies flying at inappropriate times, but right now nobody's exactly looking for babies with wings. If word gets out about the possibility, we might as fuckenwell call up
People
magazine ourselves, because someone is going to discover us. Sooner or later, someone is going to catch one of our babies flying, and then all hell is going to break loose. We need to take care of this, ourselves. Also, for those of you who've been asking, I wrote down the recipe for the chocolate croissants. It's on the refrigerator.”

Jan Morris stood up and introduced herself as a realtor-poet. “I notice,” she said, “that I am a bit older than most of you. I learned in my first marriage, which was a
disaster
, that you can tell how things are going to go by looking at how things went. We have two dead babies here. I don't think we have to look any further to see what chances our babies have in the world. We have all the information we need.”

“It's like a painting,” Lara said, “you know? That little bit of red in the corner, that little dot of color. You might not necessarily notice, but it's there and it affects everything. If you cover it up, it changes everything, but it's still there.”

The mothers were silent, processing this, some more successfully than others.

“If we don't call the police, what do we do about
him
?” Cathy Vecker asked.

“Where is he, anyway?” Maddy said.

Sylvia stood up, so suddenly she knocked over her cup of tea. “He's out there! With our babies!”

Suddenly the mothers were frightened again, thinking of their babies
flying
over Pete Ratcher, who was untied and essentially free to commit murder again. The mothers ran outside, shouting. Upstairs in Elli's room, Tamara Singh wrapped a pillow around her head to try to muffle the noise.

Raj Singh stopped digging, but Pete Ratcher, after glancing up to see what all the fuss was about, continued.

Theresa took off her shirt. Emily did the same. Strangely, Elli did too, though of course Timmy was dead.

Matthew Ratcher flew to his mother's breasts, and Gabriel Carr flew to Emily's. The mothers, observing this, stopped shouting; took off their shirts, blouses, and bras; and offered their breasts to a darkening sky dotted with bats and babies, who dove to their mothers with delighted gurgles. It wasn't long at all before the yard and house were filled with mothers in the madonna position. Elli remained in the yard for a long time, bare-breasted and with empty arms. Nobody noticed when she returned to the house.

Raj stepped into the freshly dug holes, and Pete Ratcher handed the crates to him, then helped hoist him up. Pete immediately began refilling the holes with dirt. Raj tried to help, but was incapacitated by grief, so Pete Ratcher did this part alone. When he was finished, he left Raj standing there, beneath the apple tree, weeping.

Pete Ratcher walked back to his house, weaving around the nursing women, guided by the fireflies' tiny lanterns. Theresa looked up from her adoration of Matthew and said, “Get away from me, you monster.”

“I'm not going anywhere,” Pete Ratcher said, loud enough to get everyone's attention. “I'm
his
father. I'm Elli's father. And I'm
your
husband.”

Theresa shrugged. “Well, you got two out of three right.”

Pete Ratcher stood there, stunned. The women took advantage of his state to tie him up again, while Emily pointed the gun at his dirty forehead.

“You're under arrest,” she said.

“Says who? You're no policeman.”

But it didn't matter. We were the
mothers.

 

P
ETE

“We used to have animals on this farm. Cows. Chickens. An old rooster. This was when I was a boy. We even had a horse for a while there. Here's the thing: you gotta kill the ones born bad. I know, it's not easy to do. Nobody ever said it was
easy.
You think I wanted to kill my own
grandson?
You think I'm
happy
about that? But somebody had to do something. These aren't babies that can grow up to be regular men. You mothers are losing sight of that. Sure, they're cute right now, most of them, but what's going to happen over time? You can't carry them around forever. They're growing, and they're growing unusually fast. Can't you see that? Come on, be realistic now. Just try to step back for a while and consider what's happening. What do you think's going to happen when they're grown? We have to take care of this now, before it becomes a real problem. Think of it like Afghanistan or Iraq. I know you ladies voted to fight the wars there, right? Well, Voorhisville is our Iraq. Don't you see? We have a responsibility. We have to take care of this mess. Here. Now. We
can
do this. We
should
do this. Tonight. In the barn. I'll do it. Just say your goodbyes and I'll take care of the rest. I'm not saying it'll be easy—they do sort of look like regular babies, but that's their trick. They're counting on us to feel that way until they get strong enough to do God knows what. We have a responsibility to the world. Do you think they're going to stay all cute and cuddly, flapping around like sparrows? You have to ask yourselves the hard questions. You have to ask yourselves what they will become. You have to ask yourselves, seriously, what you are raising here. You might as well get it into your heads: I'm not going to be the only one who feels like this. You're the mothers, so it's only natural you want to protect them, but there are going to be others who feel the same as me. Lots of others. What are you going to do about them? You're not going to be able to keep ignoring this. You're not going to be able to tie everyone up. All I'm saying is that the world will not accept them. That's a given. All you have to decide is, do you make the hard choice now and get on with your lives, or do you just prolong their suffering because you can't cope with your own?”

 

T
HE
M
OTHERS

Afterwards—before they started playing “Maggie May” 24/7, and before we were down to our meager rations of pickles and jelly, but after the windows had been boarded up with old barn wood—we had a little quiet time to think about what Pete Ratcher had said and came to the conclusion that he was probably right, but that didn't change anything.

We took him to the barn, and, though he was tied up, he seemed under the impression that we were taking his advice. “Don't worry,” he said. “You ladies won't hear a thing. Well, maybe the shots, but no crying or anything. Timmy didn't cry but for thirty seconds at the most.”

Elli went to her room, where she found Tamara and Raj Singh curled up in her bed, both still fully clothed but sleeping soundly. She eased in beside them, pressing against Raj the way he was pressed against Tamara.

 

E
LLI

I remember being in my bed with Tamara and Raj Singh. All three of us suffering like we were, it didn't even feel like we were three people, but more like one. The way I felt inside, I was Elli Ratcher, fifteen and on summer break, and I was a mommy with leaking breasts, and I was the monster who thought I wanted my baby to die, and I was a hundred years old like one of those women they show on TV in the black cape and hood, screaming over my dead baby, and I was the girl with the beautiful bones wrapped around the man with skin that smelled like dirt and I was the man who smelled like dirt and I was his wife dreaming the dead.

That saying kept going through my head.
We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
When I heard screaming, I thought it was a dream, and I thought
I
was a dream, peeling the girl I was away from the man laying there beside me. I walked my dream feet over to the window and the man got up and stood beside the girl and said, “What is that horrible noise?” I turned to that part of me, while the other part continued to sleep, and said, “It sounds like my father.” That's when we noticed the babies flying out of the barn, swooping through the night sky. We watched the mothers, in a disarray of tangled hair and naked breasts. We heard their screams of blood as they ran into the house. I said, “This is not happening,” and went back to bed. I heard the man saying, “Tamara, wake up, we must leave this place. Tamara, wake up,” but as far as I know she didn't wake up until the morning.

 

T
AMARA

There are certain mornings in Voorhisville when the butterflies flit about like flower seraphs and the air is bright. Tamara woke up to just such a morning, taking several deep breaths scented with manure and the faintest hint of roses, all the way from town.
Sweet,
she thought, before she rolled over and saw the empty crib, which brought her back to the nightmare of her son's death and the other baby murdered by his own grandfather. It did not seem possible that such a reality could exist in this room, papered with tiny yellow flowers.

Tamara sat at the edge of the bed listening to the breathing of the girl who still slept there and the murmur of voices below, raised in argument, then hushed. She had to go to the bathroom. It did not seem possible that such a simple bodily function would take precedence over her sorrow, but it did. She shuffled to the door, the chair she had used to discourage visitors shoved to the side. She remembered Raj, pushing at the door, asking her to let him in. Vaguely, she remembered doing so. But where had he gone? She suddenly missed her husband, as if he had taken part of her with him, as if she suffered the ghost pain of a severed limb. She stepped into the hall, which was dim and hot.

The words “police,” “reporters,” “prison,” “murder,” “self-defense,” “justice,” “love,” “fear,” “danger,” and “coffee” drifted up the stairs. Tamara stood in the hot hallway and listened.